Hodges Library is 30 Years Old — Let’s Celebrate!

[lead]Two Thousand Seventeen marks the thirtieth anniversary of the John C. Hodges Library. Join us October 23 to celebrate.[/lead]

[lead]We’ll begin our celebration with a Street Fair in the Commons.[/lead] From 3 to 5 p.m., Monday, October 23, “Main Street” in the open-space Commons on the second floor of Hodges Library will host “retro” arcade games, a radio broadcast — and 1,000 orange-and-white cupcakes! Guests who are willing to test their knowledge of the library at one of the carnival booths can pick up tickets for a drawing.

A reception and remarks will follow at 5:30 p.m. in the first-floor galleria outside Special Collections. The adjacent Elaine Altman Evans Exhibit Area will unveil new displays including the original architects’ model for Hodges Library and a pictorial retrospective of “UT Then & Now.” Both the Street Fair and the reception are free and open to all.

old Undergraduate Library
The old Undergraduate Library stood on the same site as the current Hodges Library. Note the escalator!

Once upon a time, faculty and graduate students used the “Graduate” Library, and lower-classmen used the “Undergraduate” Library—located on the same site as the present Hodges Library.

Undergraduates were not allowed into the “closed stacks” of the Hoskins “Graduate” Library. To get a book, they jotted down bibliographic information from the card catalog and presented a request slip to a library “page.” With construction of the John C. Hodges Undergraduate Library in 1969, undergrads could at last browse the stacks.

With expansion of the Hodges Library in 1987, all library collections were finally assembled in one location.